Asteroids

The Good
I was born in 1985, so Asteroids kind of went by me. As did the Atari 2600 as a whole. My first real experiences with the 2600 can be pinpointed to the months before The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released. I had run out of recently released games to play and had come with the marvelous idea to download an Atari 2600 emulator and have some fun with that.

And fun I had! Though it shines in simplicity and you are blasting away in space with ease in seconds, beating the game was quite a challenge. It was, however, the only Atari game I ever had the dedication for to beat! The premises is simple, just shoot asteroids and don't let them hit me, but it can get really intense.

I really liked the sounds in this game. And that's saying something, because for the most part I found the sounds that my emulator produced horrible and nauseating.

The Bad
Later I played the original Asteroids using MAME and I must say that the original version is (not surprisingly) superior, due to the minimal capabilities of the 2600 system. The new bitmap graphics do give it a nice distinct feeling, but everything feels smaller and more crowded.

After a while the game gets rather repetitive and boring. Some variations in the waves would have been welcome. But with the Atari you can't have high demands like that, I guess.

The Bottom Line
Asteroids is fun! You get to blow stuff up in space! You'll get tired of it after a while, but not without having your share of fun. In my opinion it's one of the better titles of the system. But that's a retrospective opinion of someone who missed the first age of video games.

The Good
For one of Atari's earliest offerings, this was a surprisingly accurate recreation of the classic arcade title.

This version of Asteroids was different in two significant ways: Its vibrant colors for the asteroids, and its unrelenting Jaws-like "dun dun" music. Oddly enough, when I think of this classic title, the 2600 version usually surpasses the arcade as my first thought that comes to mind.

The game controls well. If you can do it in the arcade, it can be done here.

The Bad
Extra men can be earned every 5,000 points. While this may bother some, the game becomes more of an endurance test than skill in some ways. Can the player reach the next bonus life before the asteroids crush the ship again?

The game also has a tendency to respawn directly in front of an asteroid at times, meaning an instant death. The plus side is that's it's one less asteroid to contend with.

The Bottom Line
As mentioned, this is my default memory of Atari's classic game. As a shooter, it accurately recreates the arcade game's feel, and has become my preferred version over the years.

The game was released when the "Arcade comes home" concept was still an amazing possibility. From Atari's lavishly illustrated covers of the time, to the little black cart that held player cred over your friends and family to get the highest score possible, it was a fun time in the living room, and one of the few cartridges I actually still own.

Does it still hold up today? Microsoft recently released it for their "Game Room" on the Xbox, and the "dun dun" music put me back into an old "competitive mode, determined to crush a whole new generation of gamers. It's still a fun title, and the design, and the funk 1970's-early 1980's style colors really took me back to a different time.

Fun, simple, basic, and addicting. The true hallmark of a classic game.

The Good
Pure old school shooting action ! AKA blow stuff up. More specifically asteroids. That's about all there is to it. The controls were well tuned and and easy to figure out. The downgrade to pixel asteroids from vector asteroids was disappointing, but hey ! YOU GET TO BLOW THEM UP ! Who can argue with fun like that ?

The Bad
No gripes whatsoever ! Period !

The Bottom Line
If you'r in the mood to blow stuff up, I can recommend no other game ! After all these years it's ironic that this is still the game we all play to blow stuff up. Go figure.